Monsters In The Dark The Making Of X Com Ufo Defense Special Edition

Monsters in the Dark charts the career of legendary designer Julian Gollop through the creation of 1994's X-COM, a terrifying and terrifyingly deep wargame hailed as the finest PC game (IGN) and a bona fide classic (GameSpot). Includes bonus interviews not found in the book's standard edition.

It is the Year 1994... In North America, turn-based strategy games were trampled by flashier video games like Doom and Mortal Kombat. All but one: Sid Meier's Civilization, a game of conquest and megahit developed by Maryland-based MicroProse. Over in southwest England, the producers at MicroProse UK aspired to design a tactical game that matched or exceeded the success of their American counterparts, who viewed the UK branch as nothing more than a support studio. Nearby, a bespectacled teenage boy toiled away on his home computer, dreaming of the day his programming aptitude would catch up to the epic campaigns unfolding across his imagination. From his early experiments in board games to digital battlefields that lit up bestseller charts, Monsters in the Dark charts the career of legendary designer Julian Gollop through the creation of 1994's X-COM, a terrifying and terrifyingly deep wargame hailed as "the finest PC game" (IGN) and "a bona fide classic" (GameSpot).

Now with a new introduction for the Tor Essentials line, A Fire Upon the Deep is sure to bring a new generation of SF fans to Vinge's award-winning works. A Hugo Award-winning Novel! “Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.”-David Brin Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Fleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. Tor books by Vernor Vinge Zones of Thought Series A Fire Upon The Deep A Deepness In The Sky The Children of The Sky Realtime/Bobble Series The Peace War Marooned in Realtime Other Novels The Witling Tatja Grimm's World Rainbows End Collections Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge True Names At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

UNOFFICIAL AND UNAUTHROIZED! Beginning as a 1986 science fiction/horror novel, Megami Tensei has since grown to become one of the most expansive Japanese RPG series of all time, comprising of over thirty titles in variety of subgenres. As the original "monster collecting" game, the heroes converse with hundreds of demons across various world mythologies and convince them to join their cause. While early entries focused on exploring post-apocalyptic Tokyo, the series has branched out in several different directions, putting you in the role of demon-hunting detectives and high school students, across other spinoffs like Devil Summoner, Persona, and Devil Survivor. This book catalogs all of them and untangles the web of the this complicated but fascinating series, reviewing many Japanese-only entries as well as other incredibly obscure titles within the series. Included features are reviews for every mainline and spinoff entry in the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series, including Devil Summoner, Devil Survivor, Last Bible, and all others, with over 30 extensive reviews in all; trivia and recurring elements; essays introducing the series and analyzing its use of demons; and reviews of various anime, manga, and other media tie-ins.

The second entry in the Landmark Video Games series

A designer’s deep dive into seven science fiction films, filled with “gloriously esoteric nerdery [and] observations as witty as they are keen” (Wired). In Typeset in the Future, blogger and designer Dave Addey invites sci-fi movie fans on a journey through seven genre-defining classics, discovering how they create compelling visions of the future through typography and design. The book delves deep into 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien, Blade Runner, Total Recall, WALL·E, and Moon, studying the design tricks and inspirations that make each film transcend mere celluloid and become a believable reality. These studies are illustrated by film stills, concept art, type specimens, and ephemera, plus original interviews with Mike Okuda (Star Trek), Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall), and Ralph Eggleston and Craig Foster (Pixar). Typeset in the Future is an obsessively geeky study of how classic sci-fi movies draw us in to their imagined worlds.

From their haunts in the shadowy corner of a bar, front and center at a convenience store, or reigning over a massive mall installation bursting with light, sound, and action, arcade games have been thrilling and addicting quarter-bearers of all ages ever since Pong first lit up its paddles. Whether you wanted a few minutes’ quick-twitch exhilaration or the taste of three-initial immortality that came with topping the high score screen, you could get it from the diverse range of space shooters, dot-eating extravaganzas, quirky beat-’em-ups, and more that have helped define pop culture for more than four decades. In Attract Mode: The Rise and Fall of Coin-Op Arcade Games, author Jamie Lendino celebrates both the biggest blockbusters (Pac-Man, Star Wars: The Arcade Game) and the forgotten gems (Phoenix, Star Castle) of the Golden Age of coin-op gaming, and pulls back the curtain on the personalities and the groundbreaking technologies that brought them to glitzy, color-drenched life in the U.S., Japan, and all over the world. You’ll start your journey exploring the electromechanical attractions and pinball games of the early 20th century. Next, you’ll meet the earliest innovators, who used college computers and untested electronics to outline the possibilities of the emerging form, and discover the surprising history behind the towering megahits from Nintendo, Sega, and others that still inform gaming today. Then you’ll witness the devastating crash that almost ended it all—and the rebirth no one expected. Whether you prefer the white-knuckle gameplay of Robotron: 2084, the barrel-jumping whimsy of Donkey Kong, or the stunning graphics and animation of Dragon’s Lair, Attract Mode will transport you back to the heyday of arcade games and let you relive—or experience for the first time—the unique magic that transformed entertainment forever.

The classic thriller about a hostile foreign power infiltrating American politics: “Brilliant . . . wild and exhilarating.” —The New Yorker A war hero and the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Sgt. Raymond Shaw is keeping a deadly secret—even from himself. During his time as a prisoner of war in North Korea, he was brainwashed by his Communist captors and transformed into a deadly weapon—a sleeper assassin, programmed to kill without question or mercy at his captors’ signal. Now he’s been returned to the United States with a covert mission: to kill a candidate running for US president . . . This “shocking, tense” and sharply satirical novel has become a modern classic, and was the basis for two film adaptations (San Francisco Chronicle). “Crammed with suspense.” —Chicago Tribune “Condon is wickedly skillful.” —Time